THIS has to be the most irrational thing I’ve seen in years. As far as I’m concerned she only displayed the truth about what went on over there. Personally I hope the police catch whoever did this to her and beat them the exact same way those prisoners were beaten. :mad:
While some of the reactions were impolite and threatening what exactly did the idiot gallery owner expect by putting them in the front window of her gallery? It may “truth to power”, but people’s relatives are fighting and dying in Iraq, and some people have huge emotional invesments in supporting the troops.
Powerful art is supposed to generate an emotionally visceral response, and this did in spades. You display extremely provocative art, and then cry foul when you get provocative responses?
The artist may be expressing regrets re the problems of the gallery owner, but I’m betting he’s never been more pleased with his art as right now given the responses
Let’s play another rousing game of “blame the victim”
I never realized that someone displaying art I disagreed with warrants rioting and beating them. Thanks for the heads up. I guess the next time I see an attractive woman in a miniskirt, I’ll just go ahead and rape her, because really, what exactly does she expect?
An art exhibition does not equal an eye-for-an-eye assault. By the above reasoning, it is reasonable to walk up to someone waving a fetus photo in front of a clinic, and kick their ass.
there is a thread about this in the BBQ Pit:
Tossing aside your completely silly and inappropriate strawman comparision of the two scenarios, the issue is not with what is warranted. It has to do what anyone with an once of common sense could tell would happen when you start poking people in emotionally vulnerable and tender areas.
If I go to a corner in Harlem and start lecturing the passerby on how they should speak better english, and not have out of wedlock children, or spend their rent money on designer clothes, and a group of locals express their displeasure by trying to put a cap in my behind, or introduce my head to a tire iron, am I a “victim” for simply expressing useful behavioral guidelines?
You have a perfect “right” of free expression to do a lot of things, but you’d better leaven it with some real world common sense if you want to be unmolested in pursuing your right to do so.
Gotta side with astro on this one. Being provocative for the sake of drawing attention can sometimes draw the wrong type of attention. Not saying it’s warranted, just saying that’s reality.
Also from reading the OP’s link, it sounds like the gallery owner was also getting heat from the ppl that supported the message after she removed the painting from the front window.
Your little scenario might be comparable if the gallery in question was located across the street from the Abu Ghraib prison.
I would hazard a guess that in criticizing the troops you would potentially have a far more more hazardous and defensive audience in the mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends and supporters of the troops in the US, than the troops in the field.
By law, no amount of free speech (however badly the truth may hurt) is any kind of justification for violence. You don’t have a right to not be offended.
In this case the art was not even offensive, just a true depiction of the reality in Iraq. If you don’t like the reality, then blame the perpetrators of the crimes, not the person who pointed them out to you.
Yes, Astro, you are blaming the victim. Knock it off. “What did she expect?” you ask. Well, maybve she expected that she would be accorded he rights as an American to be able to voice an opinion with being physically attacked. How silly of her.
How is criticizing the criminals at Abu Ghraib the same thing as criticizing “the troops?”
And how would criticizing the troops justify violence anyway? Any family members who feel they have the right to commit violence against a person who disagrees with them are just criminal scum themselves and I have no sympathy for them. they are not harmed in any way by these pictures.
You’re focusing on the issue of “justification”, just as Zagadka was focusing on what is and is not “warranted”. The attacks on the gallery owner were neither “justified” or “warranted” in any socially responsible legal or moral sense, but to anyone with an ounce of common sense, and a real world grasp of how anxious and distraught supporters of the troops might respond to an “in your face” provocation in the form of a painting displayed in the sidewalk window of a gallery, they should not have been unexpected.
The gallery owner has a perfect right to do this unmolested. Whether or not she should have a real world expectation to do this unmolested is another question.
You still seem fixated on this fallacious charge that the pictures were an attack on “the troops” in general. Since it would not be possible for any intelligent person toperceive them that way, then there was no way to expect or anticipate a violent reaction.
It would be just like if a gallery owner had displayed a painting of a lynching and then was attacked by people who claimed the painting was offensive to white people. The reasoning is just as stupid.
The images in the paintings (as described) were very powerful, and while you are entirely correct that they were specifically critcizing the sadistic behavior of the jailers, not the troops in general, the image of the American flag splattered in blood is a resonant symbol of disrespect for many people. After seeing that painting I would expect there are going to be a significant number of emotionally distraught people, spun up by those images that aren’t going to be making the fine, or not so fine, distinctions, necessary to parse out that these symbols aren’t indicting my troops, just those “bad” troops.
Too damn bad if they’re “emotionally disraught.” They are still responsible for their own actions and they have no right to censor the speech of others.
Frankly, I don’t even buy the assertion that anyone would really be sincerely hurt emotionally by the images. They’re just bullies and intellectual cowards, IMO.
Quite possibly, but it doesn’t negate the common sense expectation that they can be easily riled and potentially dangerous.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that it leaves our freedom of speech hostage to violent scum. Organized groups who used violence to get their way can and have suppressed speech in exactly this way. I bet Weimar Germany had freedom of speech guarantees, for example, but evntually everyone knew what would happen if you exercised your freedom in ways that pissed off the brown shirts.
The people who beat up the gallery owner are EXACTLY the same sort of people who made up the brown shirts. They deserve NO support. They deserve to be hunted down like dogs and jailed for a very long time. If you tolerate the brown shirts, eventually you will be following their orders.
Again, the issue is not justification or toleration, it’s expectation. In the real, direct face of person to person communication, whether by speech or images, freedom of expression as a constitutional right is always “hostage” in some form or fashion to the immediate real world reactions of those to whom you are delivering the message.
If I hold a gallery opening in the middle of Watts titled “Black Failures”, and assemble a multi-media showcase of dysfunctional, self harming behaviors by black people, am I supposed to shocked and stunned if someone puts brick through my window?
You can stand on free expression rights to the last degree allowed under the law, but in the real world there is no magical, protective force field that surrounds people who want to make or enable controversial or disturbing messages. If you expect to deliver a highly provocative message to people who may react emotionally and violently, you had best take sensible precautions for your own protection. If you don’t you are simply being foolhardy.
Ummm…this happens all the time.
It’s called “a streetcorner ministry”.
Streetcorner evangelism isn’t new, & while I find it annoying, I really don’t think they commonly get their fannies thumped.
Well, we seem to be stuck on, “it was a crime of passion, people shouldn’t do anything that might possibly offend anyone, or they can expect to receive a beating”… that kind of reasoning is frightening. I take it you want to live in an ultra-PC zone where the only art and news is that officially approved? Or better yet, for you, no art! It might make people’s brains work and incite violent responses!
It isn’t even like the artist randomly made up some stuff to make the troops look bad. I mean, OK, I can see a little bit more to your argument there. This is just reflecting what really happened.
On a side note, has anyone noticed the funny part? Artwork depicting/protesting horrible human rights abuses by angry and backwards-minded people is met with physical attack by angry and backwards-minded people?
Only in freaky, traumatized, dangerous America could painting about something REAL that has been widely condemned and critized even by the government of the same country could warrant getting “protection”. And that is what is scary.
Your examples are not at all valid since those pseudo-criticisms (“Black Failures”) would be things that would not and should not be socially acceptable. In this case, the subject of the paintings itself is what is not (or at least should not) be socially acceptable!
That this would even happen suggest that there is deep unrational hostility in a large part of the population for any valid criticism against America and an unvoiced support for these actions. An extremely dangerous situation and if you can’t see that, you also are part of the problem.